Christmas by instrumentation: with guitar

Thanks to all who responded. Several mentioned David Fink's setting ofWhat Sweeter Music and a few mentioned his setting of What Child is This. Others told the apocryphal story of Stille Nacht (broken organ, etc.) Other works that got mentioned:

"Bring a Torch, Jeanette, Isabella" arr. Stephen Paulus for SATB with guitaroriginally published by European American, now available from PaulusPublicationswww.stephenpaulus.comJeffrey Van also has an arrangement of "Away in a Manger" published byAugsburg and possibly anarrangement of "Silent Night". The Paulus piece and those by Van were allcommissioned by theDale Warland Singers. They may have done a whole album of carosl with guitar.

"Ever 'Gainst that Season" by Michael Fink pub. Hinshaw HMC-276. Interesting, brief piece usingtext by Shakespeare from Hamlet. It is a Christmas text.

A strong vote for "Child of Peace" - J. Van. It fits all of your criteria, andis just plain beautiful to boot. It's published by Jenson/Hal Leonard.

You might try "Night of Silence" arr. John Ferguson if youhave four part men. It has a string quartet part, but several years agoEmory did it with guitar, and that's how we performed it last Christmas Eve inour very traditional Lutheran service.Simple, but beautiful. It's based on TTBB SilentNight with a second tune in combined women's parts.It's not the type of thing an "accomplished" guitarist mightchoose, but you could feature him on other things.Anne Musselman

What about "Los Reyes Magos (sp)" SATB, in Spanish, with guitaraccompaniment. (Would this be an Epiphany piece? JKG)

Apparently, the Jeffrey Van arrangement of El Rorro is listed at JW Pepper.

Ann Andersen (anna(a)hoochinoo.com) and Brad Nelson(bradnelson(a)gladdemusic.com) suggested their own works..

"I have a couple of things you might want on your concert. One is Hispanicflavored, called "The World Was Waiting". It is SATB w/unison children, oryou can use a soloist in place of the kids. It is a slow ballad which wouldbe very nice with guitar, although there is no written guitar part....Also, I have a very simple piece called "A la media noche", which is alsoSATB/children and which is effective withguitar playing along. It is unpublished, but you might want to look at it. "

Ann Andersen

In response to your message, take a look athttp://www.gladdemusic.com/manger.htm. Just click on the link and you willsee the music and hear a recording. We added a guitar part for my son toplay (heard in the recording), and could supply you with the chord symbolsif you'd like a guitar player to accompany.Brad Nelson

Apologies to those of you not quoted by name. I wanted to keep the postingfrom getting huge.

Carolyn Jennings has an arrangement of "Mary, Mary" (Mary, Mary, What you gonna call that baby.....) with guitar and two flutes. It is very simple which is nice because most of the pieces I have found with guitar are somewhat difficult, too much so for a smaller church choir. This is published by Curtis Music Press

Also Michael Burkhardt has a setting of Silent Night which is for SATB choir, 2 flutes, guitar, organ, optional strings, handbells, and congregation. I believe it is published by Morningstar.

Lastly, Daniel Pinkham has a piece called "Evergreen" (sacred Christmas text by Robert Hillyer) which is for unison choir and flexible instrumentation. The accompaniment is a simple 4 bar ostinato and options are given for piano, harp, harpsichord, guitars, and bell instruments. The choral part is deceptively challenging because of the rhythm, but when it all comes together it is really beautiful.